Poland Set to ‘Quickly Overtake Britain in Military Strength And Income’

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘second tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to financial decrease and a weak military that weakens its effectiveness to allies, an expert has alerted.

Research teacher Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning brand-new report that the U.K. has been paralysed by low financial investment, high tax and misdirected policies that might see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at existing development rates.

The plain evaluation weighed that succeeding federal government failures in guideline and bring in financial investment had actually triggered Britain to lose out on the ‘markets of the future’ courted by established economies.

‘Britain no longer has the industrial base to logistically sustain a war with a near-peer like Russia for more than two months,’ he composed in The Henry Jackson Society’s newest report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report assesses that Britain is now on track to fall behind Poland in terms of per capita income by 2030, which the central European country’s military will soon surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the existing trajectory.

‘The concern is that once we are downgraded to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be almost impossible to get back. Nations do not come back from this,’ Dr Ibrahim informed MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be sped up decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have strong leaders who are able to make the tough decisions right now.’

People pass boarded up stores on March 20, 2024 in Hastings, England

A British soldier reloads his rifle on February 17, 2025 in Smardan, Romania

Staff Sergeant Rai utilizes a radio to speak to Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim invited the government’s decision to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however alerted much deeper, systemic concerns threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as an internationally influential power.

With a weakening industrial base, Britain’s usefulness to its allies is now ‘falling behind even second-tier European powers’, he warned.

Why WW3 is already here … and how the UK will need to lead in America’s absence

‘Not only is the U.K. anticipated to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but also a smaller sized army and one that is unable to sustain deployment at scale.’

This is of specific issue at a time of heightened geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be amongst the leading forces in Europe’s fast rearmament project.

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine right now, Russian and Ukrainian. Not a single European nation to install a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is a huge oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not just Starmer’s issue, of failing to purchase our military and basically outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of offering the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now has to stand on its own and the U.K. would have remained in a premium position to in fact lead European defence. But none of the European countries are.’

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low efficiency are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based international order, stated Dr Ibrahim.

The previous consultant to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review noted in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the organizations once ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by damaging the last vestiges of its military might and financial power.

The U.K., he said, ‘seems to be making increasingly expensive gestures’ like the ₤ 9bn handover of the strategic Chagos Islands and opening talks on reparations for Caribbean Slavery.

The surrender of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean has been the source of much examination.

Negotiations between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, however an arrangement was announced by the Labour federal government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security think thank alerted at the time that ‘the move demonstrates stressing tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government refers to as being characterised by fantastic power competition’.

Calls for the U.K. to supply reparations for its historic role in the servant trade were rekindled also in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a conference of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the agenda.

An Opposition 2 main fight tank of the British forces throughout the NATO’s Spring Storm exercise in Kilingi-Nomme, Estonia, Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk speak during an interview in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

Dr Ibhramin assessed that the U.K. appears to be acting versus its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of threat.

‘We comprehend soldiers and rockets however stop working to completely envisage the threat that having no alternative to China’s supply chains may have on our capability to react to military aggression.’

He recommended a new security model to ‘improve the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and hazard evaluation, access to unusual earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and via financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on nuclear energy.

‘Without immediate policy changes to reignite development, Britain will end up being a decreased power, reliant on more powerful allies and susceptible to foreign coercion,’ the Foreign Policy writer stated.

‘As international economic competition magnifies, the U.K. should choose whether to welcome a vibrant development agenda or resign itself to permanent decline.’

Britain’s dedication to the idea of Net Zero might be admirable, but the pursuit will inhibit growth and unknown strategic objectives, he alerted.

‘I am not saying that the environment is not crucial. But we just can not manage to do this.

‘We are a nation that has stopped working to purchase our financial, in our energy facilities. And we have substantial resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, consisting of using little modular reactors, might be an advantage for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

‘But we’ve failed to commercialise them and certainly that’s going to take a substantial quantity of time.’

Britain did present a brand-new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour politicians had actually insisted was key to finding the cash for expensive plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development agency, has actually been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing companies at home, business owners have actually warned a wider culture of ‘danger aversion’ in the U.K. suppresses financial investment.

In 2022, earnings for the poorest 14 million individuals fell by 7.5%, per the ONS. Pictured: Waterlooville High Street, Waterlooville, Hants

Undated file picture of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has actually consistently failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian threat’, enabling the pattern of handled decrease.

But the resurgence of autocracies on the world stage dangers even more weakening the rules-based international order from which Britain ‘benefits enormously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The risk to this order … has actually established partially since of the absence of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to deliberate foreign efforts to subvert the acknowledgment of the true lurking hazard they pose.’

The Trump administration’s alerting to NATO allies in Europe that they will have to do their own bidding has actually gone some way towards waking Britain as much as the urgency of purchasing defence.

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is inadequate. He advised a top-down reform of ‘essentially our entire state’ to bring the ossified state back to life and sustain it.

‘Reforming the well-being state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions – these are essentially bodies that take up tremendous amounts of funds and they’ll just keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS spending plan and it will truly not make much of a damage. So all of this will require fundamental reform and will take a great deal of guts from whomever is in power because it will make them unpopular.’

The report outlines suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed focus on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in modern markets, energy security, and international trade.

Vladimir Putin speaks with the governor of Arkhangelsk region Alexander Tsybulsky throughout their conference at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

File photo. Britain’s financial stagnation could see it quickly end up being a ‘second tier’ partner

Boarded-up shops in Blackpool as more than 13,000 shops closed their doors for great in 2024

Britain is not alone in falling back. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe spend for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming situation after decades of sluggish growth and reduced costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of last year that Euro area financial efficiency has actually been ‘suppressed’ given that around 2018, illustrating ‘diverse obstacles of energy reliance, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving global trade dynamics’.

There remain extensive disparities between European economies; German deindustrialisation has actually hit services difficult and forced redundancies, while Spain has grown in line with its tourism-focused economy.

This remains vulnerable, nevertheless, with homeowners significantly agitated by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of economical lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal jobs.

The Henry Jackson Society is a foreign policy and national security think thank based in the UK.

SpainPoland